Workshop

Timeless Sensemaking for Modern Sensemakers

Abby Covert

Information Architect & Author

If you know your people skills are in the way, this workshop is for you 🙏

Have you ever watched someone skilled at knowing what to say, when to speak, or how to frame a decision so others could engage? If so, you’ve already seen effective sensemaking in action.

Sensemaking is the deeply personal process we use to understand complex, messy, and/or ambiguous situations so we can make better decisions and take more thoughtful action.

This often looks like intuition or common sense. In reality, it is more about pattern recognition, discernment, and timing, developed in context to your lived experience.

This workshop is about the timeless part of sensemaking. Which isn't the tools, templates or technologies. The timeless part of sensemaking is the people part.

Have you ever felt like ...

  • Other people are always in the way of your good work

  • Your team or stakeholders is where awesome plans go to die

  • Your desk looks like a good place to bang your head in frustration after your last meeting

Don't bang your head on that desk, sensemaker. This workshop can help you see how this is all a game and you are just not playing to your highest ability yet.

In this workshop we are going to breakdown how other people impact our work, and what we can and CANNOT do about it 🔮

What you’ll learn

Below are three outcomes you can expect from using this time to improve your sensemaking skills with Abby as your guide.

  • Diversify your approach to stakeholder management

  • Learn what approaches work (and don't work) in what contexts

  • Expand your ability to understand stakeholder incentives

  • Add new sensemaking practices to your repertoire

  • Learn a simple framework for communicating about return on investment

  • Build richer structural arguments

  • Swap notes with other people making sense in other contexts

  • Contribute to small group discussions based on your experiences

  • Play Sensemaking the Game with a small group of peers

Workshop agenda

  • Set Some Rules & Meet Your Peers

    A time to get to know one another and set some ground rules before we dig into the harder stuff like who we want to be when we grow up.

  • Stakeholder Approaches

    Learn how to determine who to approach about your work and eight approaches you can try on, like masks, to have different impacts on people.

  • Sensemaking Practices

    Strengthen your sensemaking with eight practices that work in a variety of contexts (each specially suited for a specific approach)

  • Incentive Architecture

    Learn how to uncover other people’s incentives to better plan for sensemaking work in context to reality.

  • Return on Investment

    Dig into the difference between our intentions and other people’s incentives and look at ways of making a case for sensemaking work using a rubric of six types of expected return.

  • Structural Arguments

    Take on structural argumentation as a series of eight lenses through which any change proposal can be strengthened on the way to other people’s eyeballs, hearts, and minds.

  • Sensemaking the Game

    End with a fun way to model the chaos of a typical project while working on your ability to think about squishy topics like incentives, power, return on investment, and stakeholder drama.

Learn directly from Abby

Abby Covert

Abby Covert

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Author, teacher and community leader in the field of information architecture

See all products from Abby

Who this workshop is for

  • Sensemakers looking to feel less frustrated and alone in their practice.

  • Anyone for whom the "people part" is in the way of the "making sense" part.

  • Systems thinkers who struggle to connect with stakeholders.

What's included

Abby Covert

Live sessions

Learn directly from Abby Covert in a real-time, interactive format.

PDF of Timeless Sensemaking for Modern Sensemakers

This will be the text we reference during the workshop. It is recommended that you do the pre-reading assignments to get the most out of LIVE class time.

FREE Month of Premium Access to the Sensemakers Club

A community where curious people go to grow. Premium membership includes unlimited daily discussion groups hosted by peers trained to hold space not fill it, regular live sessions with Abby, and access to the Sensemakers Library, a collection of community-powered education created and tested at the Sensemakers Club. Access starts after class.

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Private cohort

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A dedicated cohort with a custom schedule and curriculum, tailored to your team.

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$800

USD

Jul 24
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